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Purpose – To critically examine various ethical decision making models and use them to arrive at five hypotheses to understand the methods used by small and medium enterprise (SME) owner-managers in Australia when faced with ethical issues or dilemmas.Design/methodology/approach – This analysis involves literature reviews of rational decision making process, alternative methods of decision making and various ethical decision making models including Rest’s four-component model to arrive at the five hypotheses.Findings – The five hypotheses contend that SME owner-managers tend to resolve ethical issues using methods similar to Rest’s four-component model. Some may utilise all four components while others may skip one or more components of the model. Others may engage in intuition and heuristic methods of decision making. Ethical decisions by SME managers may be influenced by factors such as organisational factors, moral exemplars and reflection. The final hypothesis contends that SME managers could consider using the Balanced Scorecard as an instrument to monitor and manage business ethical issues.Research limitations – The literature reviews are not exhaustive but provide sufficient information for the purposes of this chapter.Practical implications – The significance of this study is that the hypotheses can be used to conduct interviews with SME managers and findings from the interviews could be developed into a practical tool for practising managers and a standard or guidelines for managing ethical issues in an SME.Originality/value – This chapter fulfils the need to understand the ethical decision making process and methods used by practicing SME managers in Australia.

Exemplars play a central role in business ethics and ethical decision-making. In general terms, an exemplar is defined as ‘a person or thing to be copied’ and can include persons who have their sense of moral commitment as a core part of their sense of self, take a principled personal stand or a role model or an organisation committed to certain moral standards or other things such as case studies, anecdotes, and even fables and myths. Researchers have used different approaches to explain the role of exemplars in decision-making in general and ethical decision-making in particular. This paper presents evidence of SME managers acknowledging the role of exemplars in the management of their businesses and in their ethical decision-making processes.

Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted in an exploratory manner with 20 owners/senior managers of SMEs in Australia. Two types of exemplars were identified in the analysis – individual and organisational, and indicated the prominence of individual exemplars over organisational exemplars. Analysis also suggests the use of multiple exemplars, learning moral behaviours, getting inspired, learning ethical decision-making skills and the ability to retrieve exemplar representations from memory to influence judgements and decisions.

This study provides an insight into one of the methods employed by SME managers in ethical decision-making. Findings could be useful in making SME managers aware of their penchant of using exemplars. The paper contributes to the knowledge in the area of one of the many methods that SME managers use in ethical decision-making.

National and international ethics associations serve an important purpose in the development of resources which can lead to ethical behaviour in organisations. They bring practitioners and academics together, promote discussion and foster excellence through the presentation and subsequent publication of papers. One purpose of this journal is to publish selected papers from the annual conference of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics. Our intention is that each year there will be one issue devoted to a theme and one to papers from the conference. Volume 8 was the first themed volume under our editorship, the festschrift in honour of Patrick Primeaux; Volume 10 will have the theme moral saints, moral exemplars and moral heroes.

Susanne Bahn is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Innovative Practice, School of Management, Faculty of Business and Law, at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Her interests lie in Occupational Health & Safety practice and processes, risk management, middle management change processes, and vocational educational training in the construction and mining industries.